Something Wicked This Way Comes?
by charleygirl
Summary: An investigation results in a graveyard vigil on the 31st of October.


**SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES?**

It was a cold evening; so cold that the chill bit deep into my bones and made my old wound ache abominably. I shifted upon the broken tombstone which I had been forced to use as a seat or else find myself pitching over into the long grass, wishing that I possessed the foresight to pick up the rugs from the back of the sofa before I had been hustled out of the door. From thence my thoughts drifted to the roaring fire that Mrs Hudson would no doubt have lit had we the sense to have remained indoors on such an inclement night. Such was my vivid imagination that I could almost feel the heat upon my face and hear the crackling of the flames. My nose twitched in anticipation of the muffins I would toast before the blaze and I could feel my mouth begin to water.

"I could have been doing plenty of things tonight," my companion muttered, jerking me from my day (though it was surely technically too late an hour for that) dreaming. Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard hunched miserably into his coat and stamped his feet against the frosted mud in a vain attempt to regain some circulation in his extremities. "Could be enjoying a good book and a hot toddy in front of the fire...maybe a few pints and a bit of a sing-song down the pub...even being dragged to a bloody murder in dockland and finding Gregson was already there and was halfway to solving it would be an improvement on crouching in a freezing graveyard at midnight on the thirty-first of October."

"Oh, come now, Lestrade," I said, even though I could not help but agree with him in principle. I rummaged in my pocket and found a crumpled paper bag which I was pleased to find not quite empty. "Surely you don't believe in ghouls and ghosts and things that go bump in the night?"

"You'd know all about the latter if you had a five year old who has a habit of falling out of bed in the small hours," he replied, "And I may not believe in ghosts but I _do_ believe in ghouls, and grave robbers and Burke and Hare. I'd rather not have the dead put in an appearance this evening, thank you very much. Besides, there's no harm in being a little superstitious, though I'm sure your Mr Holmes will tell me I'm a fool - "

I offered the bag. "Pear drop?"

"Eh? Oh, thank you." Lestrade took one of the sweets and popped it into his mouth before continuing, "There must be a reason why this night's got such a reputation."

"Folklore. Old wives' tales. Bedtime stories to scare children. Nothing more than that, I'm sure." I gave him a sidelong glance in the moonlight. "Lestrade, have you actually seen something...out of the ordinary?"

He sucked on the pear drop, looking uncomfortable. "Too many things, in this job. Wouldn't surprise me if all the weird, mad refuse of London took the opportunity for a bit of mischief tonight, and if they are I don't care to be on the receiving end of it." I could not blame him for his sentiments, but at the same time I sensed that there was more to it than just a desire to be as far away from any All Hallows Eve inspired unpleasantness as possible. He must have realised this from my scrutiny, for he shook his head and said, "The wife saw...well, she _says_ she saw it, I couldn't make out a thing myself but she swears blind it was there."

"What was it?"

"A little girl, at the foot of the stairs. Was years ago now, but she told me this girl was about the age our Lucy would have been if she...well, you know."

I did. Holmes probably did not, as he chose not to pry into the private lives of our professional colleagues unless they became relevant to his work, but Lestrade had confided to me one evening over port and cigars that he and his wife had lost their first child to scarlet fever. Had she lived, the girl would be nearing twenty-one. "That is quite common," I said now, "Especially for a mother. I have had patients see relatives, smell perfumes and tobacco when there is no one else in the room. One old lady repeatedly asked me why her ten years' deceased husband was on top of the wardrobe. The mind is an amazing organ, one we cannot at present hope to comprehend."

"I'll take your word for it, Doctor." Lestrade pulled his coat closer around him, as though chilled by something other than the wind. "I went all over the house and could find nothing. She's not seen the child again, from that day to this, so I'm fairly sure we're not being haunted." He laughed, but the sound held little humour and struck me as somewhat desperate.

"Quite," I agreed.

"Makes you think of silly things, sitting around in the dark on a night like this," the inspector said, peering off into the shadows that surrounded us. "How much longer do we have to wait here?"

I took a pear drop for myself and pocketed the bag. "Until Holmes returns."

"And when the devil will that be? Feels as though he's been gone half the night already." When I took out my watch to show him the time he squinted at it and pulled a face. "Seems like three times that."

"I'm sure he will be back soon. He said he was only making reconnoitre of the area," I told him, shifting my position on the stone once more. The wind had picked up now and was beginning to slice through my heavy overcoat. As it passed through the trees it made a wailing noise that sounded eerily human. A shiver ran down my spine, and I told myself it was just a coincidence.

Lestrade grunted. "Maybe he's fallen into a open grave."

A fat raindrop fell with a plop onto my hat. I glanced up to see that the clouds were swiftly moving to cover the moon – before long we would be sitting here in complete blackness for Holmes had taken the dark lantern and forbidden any more light so as not to alert our quarry to our presence. "Only a mad or desperate body snatcher would venture out on a night like this."

"Quite so. I believe that the majority of them are safe and warm in the snug of the St John of Jerusalem," replied a voice quietly behind my left ear which nearly sent me leaping into the air. I turned, heart pounding, to see the pale, lean countenance of Sherlock Holmes lit ghoulishly from below by the beam of his half-shuttered lamp. There was a mischievous smile quirking one corner of his mouth.

"By God, that's exactly where I'd like to be," said Lestrade, who had reacted in a similar fashion to myself, pressing one hand to his chest. "Mr Holmes, if you're trying to give me a coronary you're going the right way about it!"

"How the devil did you come without us hearing you?" I demanded, almost at the same moment. "Honestly, Holmes, your tricks will drive me into an early grave!"

Holmes looked utterly unrepentant. "Well, there are plenty hereabouts awaiting occupants. And speaking of which," he added before I could protest, "I believe I have found the location of our friend Francome's hidey-hole."

"Thank heaven for that," muttered Lestrade, and I could not help sighing with relief.

"Dear me," the detective said, giving us both a theatrically disappointed look, "the pair of you are as nervous as a couple of small children. Has Watson been telling ghost stories, Lestrade? It is an appalling habit of his."

"Just tell us where Francome has been keeping his loot, Mr Holmes," said the inspector, "I've been dreaming of my warm bed for the last hour and I'm anxious to turn the dream into reality."

Holmes sniffed. "Oh, very well. This way, gentlemen..."

* * *

"You must be joking!" Lestrade exclaimed ten minutes later, when we had followed Holmes on a circuitous route round the perimeter of the graveyard. The clouds had completely obscured the moon and we stood in cold, blustery darkness save the feeble beam from the detective's lantern. Our walk – stumbling over fallen stones and nearly tumbling headlong when our feet caught in rabbit holes and other uneven features of the invisible ground beneath us – had brought us to a large, white tabletop tomb, apparently better kept than most of the memorials in the vicinity. When I enquired where the hiding place we were seeking might be found, Holmes merely gestured to the sepulchre before us.

"Oh, no, Holmes, surely not in there," I said a moment after the inspector's outburst.

"Where better? All we have to do is open it." Holmes handed me the lantern and began rifling through his pockets for the housebreaking equipment I had seen him secrete there before we left Baker Street.

"Are you absolutely sure this is the place?" Lestrade asked, the tone of his voice suggesting that he was hoping my friend might be mistaken for the first time in their acquaintance.

Holmes sighed impatiently. "When one is hiding something in a graveyard, a tomb is the obvious place. I had deduced that much before we even arrived. However, it took a little more time to identify the correct grave – you will observe that, unlike that growing upon any of the other graves, the grass here has recently been cut back around the base, no doubt in order to facilitate easy access, a fact which has also resulted in two very distinct sets of footprints in the mud...footprints which you are about to obscure with your policeman's boots, Lestrade!"

The inspector took a careful step back, peering at the ground. Since I had the lantern, he would be able to make out little of Holmes's details. "If you say so, Mr Holmes."

"I do say so." Holmes found what he was searching his pockets for: a small but solid jemmy which he inserted under the lip of the tomb's flat stone top. Though I had guessed what he was about to do, I still protested,

"Holmes, this is desecration!"

I received a tut of annoyance in reply. "Hardly, Watson. I very much doubt that anyone has been buried in this particular tomb for many a long year, hence Francome's decision to use it. Help me, both of you, but mind you don't disturb the ground."

"We'll be disturbing more than the ground," Lestrade murmured in my ear as we both put our shoulders to the stone. "Reminds me of that story about when Rossetti dug up Lizzie Siddal to get those blasted poems of his back – they said she looked as though she'd passed on just the day before, and her red hair filled the coffin where it kept growing after she died."

I shuddered involuntarily. "Patently impossible," I said, but an icy finger made its way down my back all the same.

"Well, you'd know, being a medical man. I think that - "

"When you have finished gossiping, Lestrade, perhaps we could get on?" Holmes hissed, glaring at us both. "Now: on my count. One...two..._three_!"

We all pushed against the stone, and, almost to my surprise, with a great creak it began to move. Though it was a considerable weight, it slid across quite smoothly and I began to believe just what Holmes was suggesting – there could surely be no more secure place to store contraband than in an old grave. With a quick smile of triumph, Holmes snatched up the dark lantern and began to slowly lower it into the space we had revealed.

It was with some trepidation, I must admit, that I peered over the side, Lestrade behind me. There was a musty smell, but thankfully no trace of the horrible sweet odour of decay which I had initially been expecting. Holmes was correct – the tomb had not been used in some considerable time. I could see very little in the lantern's faint glow, but Holmes evidently had some idea of what he was looking for as he leant right over, casting about with his free hand into the interior of the tomb.

He must have found something for he gave a cry of satisfaction – but the next moment he jumped back, knocking me over as he did and dropping the lantern to the floor. Amidst the overgrown grass around us the tiny half-shuttered flame provided even less illumination than before, but it was enough for me to see exactly what it was that had startled him. To my horror, something was rising from the tomb, a white, ethereal apparition with the distinct shape of a man. It seemed to glow in the darkness as though lit from within, casting its unearthly halo over the sepulchre above which it hovered. I felt my blood run cold, my hair stand up on end.

"Oh, my God..."

"Bloody hell!" was Lestrade's rather more earthy response. "What_ is_ that?"

I tried to get to my feet – beside me the flame in the lantern had finally gone out and Holmes was desperately trying to coax it back into life. It mattered little for the light from the tomb was as bright as day, forcing me to cover my eyes with one hand for fear of being blinded. I heard a snarl of frustration from my friend and then a high-pitched howl of fury followed by a crash – I removed my hand just in time to see the light vanish as though it had been switched off like one of the new-fangled electric bulbs before something barrelled into me from behind, knocking me down once more and sending me into a tangle of arms and legs with Holmes and Lestrade.

Holmes was the first to recover, leaping over us as we struggled on the ground and setting off at a run. "After him, Lestrade!" he cried, "Watson, where's that revolver?" In a few moments his voice had faded into the distance.

Lestrade helped me up, squinting into the darkness in the direction Holmes had taken. "What the devil happened?"

"I don't know, but - " Something small and white caught my eye, trapped in the long grass beside Holmes's lantern. I plucked it out and found a folded piece of paper. As I opened it, the moon obligingly reappeared, allowing me to read the single line that was written there in elegant copperplate:

_Beware the witching hour, Mr Holmes._

I passed the note to Lestrade, and he frowned. "What does it mean?"

My game leg nearly gave out on me as I stumbled over to the tomb. There was no sign of the strange apparition of a few moments before, and as I leant over the side, the interior now bathed in moonlight, I could see that, but for some rotten wood and a few bones, it was completely empty.

"I think," I said, "that there may be rather more to this case than we thought..."

FIN


End file.
